For a long time, I stared at him with open interest in my eyes, while he watched the road; his grin never left him. Just as I was about to tell him to pull over somewhere, before we reached his parents' place of super-hearing mood killers, he pulled the car over.
Confused, and slightly alarmed that he maybe could read minds now, I looked around at where he'd stopped. We were quite a ways from the city now, away from the main highway and on a slower, less traveled road. In fact, there weren't any cars coming or going on this dusty stretch of blacktop for as far as I could see. But before I could get too excited over that prospect, the reason Teren had pulled over became glaringly obvious.
On the side of the road was a small camper, the kind that looked like a fifth wheel trailer and a pickup truck had given birth to a truck/trailer hybrid. This poor creation was suffering from some sort of vehicular malaise. The engine hood was propped open, and someone was underneath it, examining the underbelly. All we could see were a pair of denims dangerously protruding out onto the road. If this street were busier, he'd probably have gotten his ankles run over by now.
Teren separated our hands and made to open his door. "What are you going to do?" I asked.
He gave me a quick peck. "I'm going to see if I can help. I know a little bit about cars, working on my dad's jeeps." He shrugged. "And if all else fails, I can at least call him a tow truck."
I glanced at his cell phone sitting in the console, and then back up to him. I raised an eyebrow in question. "Are you just trying to delay us?"
Teren rolled his eyes. "No...I'm trying to help someone." He cracked his door and nodded his head in the direction of the incapacitated vehicle. "Come with. You can time me." Grinning, he opened his door and got out.
Shaking my head at his clear attempt to set us back a few hours, and, honestly, I had come up with much better ways to delay us than him sweating all over a rusty engine block, I opened my door and stepped out into the cool breeze of this fine California morning.
Crunching through the dirt along the side of the road, I joined Teren at the front of his car and clasped hands with him. Together, we walked over to where the man was still buried underneath his vehicle. We walked right up to the man's shins and Teren bent down a little to talk to him. "Excuse me, sir? Can I help you in any way?" Teren politely asked the set of legs that still hadn't moved. When no one responded, he again asked, "Sir?"
Teren cocked his head and started to look up, like he'd heard something. That was when my feeble human ears heard something. It was a faint metallic "pop", like something under great pressure had been released. That was the last thing that made sense to me, for a very long while.
A loud, scraping metal noise immediately followed the pop, like a crowbar being dragged behind a car flying down the freeway. Before I could even ascertain where the noise was coming from though, I was being lifted into the air by Teren's strong arms. Confused by the sudden movement, I clung to him with both hands. Just as I was about to ask him what he was doing, a sickening wet thud filled my ears, and we both started to fall over. I landed heavily on his stomach, Teren screamed in pain.
"Teren...baby...?"
Hopelessly confused, I searched his agonized face while my hands ran over his chest. Scooting off to the side of him, my hands and eyes drifted over his body. I began to worry that I'd really hurt him when I'd fallen on top of him. I also wondered why my never clumsy boyfriend, had seemingly fallen over for no apparent reason.
That was when my hand got to his legs...to what used to be strong, healthy, intact legs. My fingers felt the wetness of his jeans and startled, I pulled those fingers to my face. They were red-the deep, dark red of freshly exposed blood; his jeans below his knees were quickly becoming saturated with it. He jerked in pain when I accidentally touched his injuries, and he cried out in agony.
I wiped a shaking hand on my jeans and sat back so I didn't cause him anymore pain. Looking up at the vehicle, I saw a steel rod bar protruding out from under the frame of the camper. It was close to the rear tire, at a ninety degree angle to the vehicle. I could see a thick suspension coil attached to it and looking closer at the front tire, I saw the clip where the rod had once been secured to the vehicle. That was when my brain started making connections.
The pop I'd heard, was something or someone releasing the bolt that was holding back the rod. With that clip released, the rod had flown back towards the rear tire, kinetic energy giving it strength and speed that no human would be fast enough to get away from. But Teren wasn't entirely human. He'd heard the pop and calculated what it was. He'd had just enough time to scoop me above where the bar was sweeping around, but he hadn't had time to scoop and run; the bar had hit his legs full force, midway between his knees and his ankles, smashing his shins into a bloody, fractured mess.
It was in this daze of What the hell just happened? that I noticed that the pair of legs we'd approached earlier were gone. A hole dug under the vehicle would have provided a person more than enough room to hide and wait-wait in their trap. A trap we'd inadvertently sprung. Then a shadow blocked out the morning sun on one side of my face and I instinctively turned to look at it.
A grizzly man, wearing a green army jacket with a knife clipped to his belt, faced me. "Morning, sweetheart," he calmly said, right before he brought his fist around to my temple and knocked me out cold.
Chapter 16 - Abomination
I never again in this life want to wake up the way I did after being socked in the head...not that I ever wanted to be socked in the head again. I didn't. It hurt. A lot. But waking up with a throbbing ache in my skull and a tender bruise on the very edge of my eye socket, hurt worse than the actual hit. Irritation swept through me, but it was immediately replaced by ice cold fear. I was no longer outside. I was lying on my back, on the floor of a dirt strewn camper that was gently rocking back and forth in the unmistakable sway of road movement.
As these facts entered my brain, stubborn irritation cropped back up. Seriously? I've been kidnapped? Seriously? Teren and I have been kidnapped? Teren...oh God...
I shifted my head and saw the blood first; a trail of it along the floor led me to the slumped form of my honey. He was resting against a faded brown chair with ripped cushions that had been hastily sewn back together in a ragged, zigzag pattern. His legs were a red, sodden mess stretched out in front of him. His head was lying back on the chair and every jarring bump of the vehicle elicited a groan from him.
I said a silent prayer of thanks that he was still alive and, ignoring my aching head, which seemed so trivial now in comparison to Teren's injuries, I carefully crawled over to him. Avoiding all contact with his lower body, I placed a hand on his cheek. He groaned and his eyes fluttered. I looked around the small cabin, but nothing in here was going to help us get out, not with Teren's legs in the mess they were.
I held his face close to me as I took in the small, white kitchen table, that looked about ready to collapse, the stove and small sink, forming the rest of the kitchen, and a room near the back, that probably contained a nearly impossible to use toilet. On the other side of us was the front of the vehicle, mainly consisting of the driver's area. Space over the truck cabin held a thin mattress that was trying to call itself a bed.
Luckily, or maybe unluckily, the driving portion of the camper was enclosed, and I could neither get to it, nor could our captor get to me. I tried to think of a way to block the main door by the bathroom, so that he couldn't get back here when the vehicle stopped, but really, that wouldn't solve anything. Teren would bleed to death and I'd starve to death and the captor would win anyway. Assuming our death was his primary goal...and I was going to go ahead and assume that, since the way we'd been taken wasn't exactly welcoming.
A pothole in the road banged the back of the camper down and Teren woke with a cry of pain. His eyes, unfocused and full of stress, flicked to mine. His face relaxed infinitesimally. "Emma...you're okay." His voice was strained with contained tension. I could tell he really wanted to scream again, but he didn't want to freak me out. He might as well have. I was already freaked out.
I kissed his forehead, after wiping off some of the perspiration. "I'm fine, baby. Shhh...rest, Teren. Please."
He weakly lifted his head to look around at where we were. His eyes rested on his bloody jeans and his face paled even more. "Oh God...I remember," he muttered, then he flinched as a jar in the road bounced him.
"Do you know what's going on?" I whispered, not sure why I was whispering, but feeling the need for quiet at the look of restraint on his face.
He gritted his teeth and shook his head. "No..." I looked down at his legs while he searched my face. They were bad. I didn't know if any bones shards were poking through his skin and I really didn't want to know. Just looking at the blood was horrifying enough.
"Emma..." His weak voice brought my gaze back to his eyes, so beautiful and so filled with agony. "Please...run if you can." I was already shaking my head and his crystal blue eyes brimmed with moisture. "Don't...don't you dare stay because of me." His voice picked up heat. "You run."
I stared at him with a blank expression, knowing for all the world, that I was incapable of honoring his request...and then I nodded. He closed his eyes and laid his head back on the chair in relief. I kissed his forehead again and held in the tears. "Thank you for saving me," I whispered against his clammy skin.
He muttered something that sounded loving and his eyes fluttered, but they didn't open, and he didn't speak again. He didn't move again either, just sat there with his head back on the chair, either resting as I'd asked him to...or passed out from the pain. Needing to do something, I carefully undid his belt, and then undid mine. Thankfully, we'd both gone for the rancher, belt buckle look. We'd even joked to each other about it before this little fiasco. I wrapped the belt around his thigh, above his knee, and gritting my teeth, cinched it tight. He cried out, but didn't wake up. I did the other one. He no longer cried out.
I laid my head on his chest and felt tears that I hadn't been aware of, roll off my nose to splash on his shirt. "I'm sorry, baby. Please hold on..." I whispered, and only the occasional creak of the old camper answered me.
We drove in that near silence for what felt like days. It couldn't have been days, since the sunlight coming through the smudged window over the table never left us, but it felt like days. I worried over Teren's legs, and wondered if my hastily construed tourniquets were actually doing anything. I worried over how I was going to get a man who couldn't walk away from the predator in the cabin. I stressed over where he was taking us. I stroked Teren's cheek, soothing him with reassuring words, that I didn't really feel, whenever a big enough movement brought him out of his pain-induced stupor. And I wished for the first time ever that Halina was with us. Even though it was daytime outside and that wasn't possible, I wanted her to come rip the man's bloody throat out.
Finally, the camper pulled off the main road to a bumpy dirt road. I think my heart went into overdrive. The camper, although frightening in its own way, had been my home for hours, and I was in a comfortable zone of terror with it. I knew every fault line in the rickety table. I'd counted every water stain in the ceiling and I'd even named the resident spiders living in the kitchen window-Fred and Daphne. Whatever new hell we were being led to, was all the more nerve-racking simply for its newness.